Propaganda Ellul Quotes

Propaganda begins when dialogue ends. (Quoted by Marshall McLuhan in McLuhan Hot & Cool)

Propaganda ceases where simple dialogue begins.

Hate, hunger, and pride make better levers of propaganda than do love or impartiality.

To be effective, propaganda must constantly short-circuit all thought and decision. It must operate on the individual at the level of the unconscious. He must not know that he is being shaped by outside forces...but some central core in him must be reached in order to release the mechanism in the unconscious which will provide the appropriate - and expected - action.

Those who read the press of their group and listen to the radio of their group are constantly reinforced in their allegiance. They learn more and more that their group is right, that its actions are justified; thus their beliefs are strengthened. At the same time, such propaganda contains elements of criticism and refutation of other groups, which will never be read or heard by a member of another group...Thus we see before our eyes how a world of closed minds establishes itself, a world in which everybody talks to himself, everybody constantly views his own certainty about himself and the wrongs done him by the Others - a world in which nobody listens to anybody else.

The primary element in any civilization is a stable relation between man and his environment. When man becomes the plaything of abstract decisions, a civilization can no longer be created.

Again I want to emphasize that the study of propaganda must be conducted within the context of a technological society. Propaganda is called upon to solve problems created by technology, to play on maladjustments, and to integrate the individual into a technological world.

The propagandist naturally cannot reveal the true intentions of the principal for whom he acts... That would be to submit the projects to public discussion, to the scrutiny of public opinion, and thus to prevent their success... Propaganda must serve instead as a veil for such projects, masking true intentions.

Naturally, the educated man does not believe in propa­ganda; he shrugs and is convinced that propaganda has no effect on him. This is, in fact, one of his great weaknesses, and propa­gandists are well aware that in order to reach someone, one must first convince him that propaganda is ineffectual and not very clever. Because he is convinced of his own superiority, the intellectual is much more vulnerable than anybody else to this maneu­ver, even though basically a high intelligence, a broad culture, a constant exercise of the critical faculties, and full and objective information are still the best weapons against propaganda.

The only communications truly without influence are those that one learns to ignore or never hears at all; this is why Jacques Ellul argued that it is only the disconnected—rural dwellers or the urban poor—who are truly immune to propaganda, while intellectuals, who read everything, insist on having opinions, and think themselves immune to propaganda are, in fact, easy to manipulate.

What is needed, then, is continuous agitation produced artificially even when nothing in the events of the day justifies or arouses excitement. Therefore, continuing propaganda must slowly create a climate first, and then prevent the individual from noticing a particular propaganda operation in contrast to ordinary daily events.

People used to think that learning to read evidenced human progress; they still celebrate the decline of illiteracy as a great victory; they condemn countries with a large proportion of illiterates; they think that reading is a road to freedom. All this is debatable, for the important thing is not to be able to read, but to understand what one reads, to reflect on and judge what one reads. Outside of that, reading has no meaning (and even destroys certain automatic qualities of memory and observation). But to talk about critical faculties and discernment is to talk about something far above primary education and to consider a very small minority. The vast majority of people, perhaps 90 percent, know how to read, but do not exercise their intelligence beyond this. They attribute authority and eminent value to the printed word, or, conversely, reject it altogether. As these people do not possess enough knowledge to reflect and discern, they believe—or disbelieve—in toto what they read. And as such people, moreover, will select the easiest, not the hardest, reading matter, they are precisely on the level at which the printed word can seize and convince them without opposition. They are perfectly adapted to propaganda.

...modern man does not think about current problems; he feels them. He reacts, but he does not understand them any more than he takes responsibility for them. He is even less capable of spotting any inconsistency between successive facts; man's capacity to forget is unlimited. This is one of the most important and useful points for the propagandist, who can always be sure that a particular propaganda theme, statement, or event will be forgotten within a few weeks.

To the extent that propaganda is based on current news, it cannot permit time for thought or reflection. A man caught up in the news must remain on the surface of the event; he is carried along in the current, and can at no time take a respite to judge and appreciate; he can never stop to reflect. There is never any awareness -- of himself, of his condition, of his society -- for the man who lives by current events. Such a man never stops to investigate any one point, any more than he will tie together a series of news events. We already have mentioned man's inability to consider several facts or events simultaneously and to make a synthesis of them in order to face or to oppose them. One thought drives away another; old facts are chased by new ones. Under these conditions there can be no thought. And, in fact, modern man does not think about current problems; he feels them. He reacts, but be does not understand them any more than he takes responsibility for them. He is even less capable of spotting any inconsistency between successive facts; man's capacity to forget is unlimited. This is one of the most important and useful points for the propagandist, who can always be sure that a particular propaganda theme, statement, or event will be forgotten within a few weeks. Moreover, there is a spontaneous defensive reaction in the individual against an excess of information and -- to the extent that he clings (unconsciously) to the unity of his own person -- against inconsistencies. The best defense here is to forget the preceding event. In so doing, man denies his own continuity; to the same extent that he lives on the surface of events and makes today's events his life by obliterating yesterday's news, he refuses to see the contradictions in his own life and condemns himself to a life of successive moments, discontinuous and fragmented. This situation makes the "current-events man" a ready target for propaganda. Indeed, such a man is highly sensitive to the influence of present-day currents; lacking landmarks, he follows all currents. He is unstable because he runs after what happened today; he relates to the event, and therefore cannot resist any impulse coming from that event. Because he is immersed in current affairs, this man has a psychological weakness that puts him at the mercy of the propagandist. No confrontation ever occurs between the event and the truth; no relationship ever exists between the event and the person. Real information never concerns such a person. What could be more striking, more distressing, more decisive than the splitting of the atom, apart from the bomb itself? And yet this great development is kept in the background, behind the fleeting and spectacular result of some catastrophe or sports event because that is the superficial news the average man wants. Propaganda addresses itself to that man; like him, it can relate only to the most superficial aspect of a spectacular event, which alone can interest man and lead him to make a certain decision or adopt a certain attitude. But here we must make an important qualification. The news event may be a real fact, existing objectively, or it may be only an item of information, the dissemination of a supposed fact. What makes it news is its dissemination, not its objective reality.

I always come back to this thing that this French sociologist Jacques Ellul said, 'There are no political solutions, only technological ones. The rest is propaganda​.

Az ókori görögöket és rómaiakat vizsgálva Ellul (1967) például a propaganda alábbi eszközeit azonosítja be: hízelgés a népnek, ingyenes népünnepélyek, győzelmi ünnepségek, történelemhamisítás, az aktuális rend kialakulásáról és szükségszerűségéről szóló mítoszok megteremtése, közmunkák (amelyek a munkanélküliség elleni harcot és a monumentális építmények emelését szolgálják), a véleményvezérek megvásárlása, az ellenzéki közvélemény megosztása, privilégiumok osztogatása a lojális városoknak, valamint az ideológiai szükségleteket kiszolgáló művészek támogatása.

For action makes propaganda's effect irreversible. He who acts in obedience to propaganda can never go back. He is now obliged to believe in that propaganda because of his past action. He is obliged to receive from it his justification and authority, without which his action will seem to him absurd or unjust, which would be intolerable. He is obliged to continue to advance in the direction indicated by propaganda, for action demands more action. He is what one calls committed - which is certainly what the Communist party anticipates, for example, and what the Nazis accomplished. The man who has acted in accordance with the existing propaganda has taken his place in society. From then on he has enemies. Often he has broken with his milieu or his family; he may be compromised. He is forced to accept the new milieu and the new friends that propaganda makes for him. Often he has committed an act reprehensible by traditional moral standards and has disturbed a certain order; he needs a justification for this - and he gets more deeply involved by repeating the act in order to prove that it was just. Thus he is caught up in a movement that develops until it totally occupies the breadth of his conscience. Propaganda now masters him completely — and we must bear in mind that any propaganda that does not lead to this kind of participation is mere child's play.

The First World War; the Russian revolution of 1917; Hitler's revolution of 1933; the second World War; the further development of revolutionary wars since 1944 in China, Indochina, and Algeria, as well as the Cold War—each was a step in the development of modern propaganda. With each of these events propaganda developed further, increased in depth, discovered new methods. At the same time it conquered new nations and new territories: To reach the enemy, one must use his weapons; this undeniable argument is the key to the systematic development of propaganda. And in this way propaganda has become a permanent feature in nations that actually despise it, such as the United States and France.

Propaganda is necessarily false, when it speaks of values, of truth, of good, of justice, of happiness-and when it interprets and colors facts and imputes meaning to them. It is true when it serves up the plain fact, but does so only for the sake of establishing a pretense and only as an example of the interpretation that it supports with that fact.

Integration propaganda and the educated Let us note right away a final aspect of Integration Propaganda: the more comfortable, cultivated, and informed the milieu to which it is address, the better it works. Intellectuals are more sensitive than peasants to integration propaganda. In fact, they share the stereotypes of a society even when they are political opponents of the society.

Arousing an active and mythical belief" The aim of modern propaganda is no longer to modify ideas, but to provoke action. It is no longer to change adherence to a doctrine, but to make the individual cling irrationally to a process of action. It is no longer to lead to a choice, but to loosen the reflexes. It is no longer to transform an opinion, but to arouse an active and mythical belief.

The poorest population The really poor cannot be subjected to integration propaganda because the immediate concern of daily life absorb all their capacities and efforts. To be sure, the poor can be pushed into rebellion, into to an explosion of violence; they can be subjected to agitation propaganda and excited to the point of theft and murder. But they cannot be trained by propaganda, kept to hand, channeled, or oriented.

The propagandist tries to create myths The propagandist tries to create myths by which man will live, which respond to his sense of the sacred. By "myth" we mean an all-encompassing, activating image: a sort of vision of desirable objectives that have lost their material, practical character and have become strongly colored, overwhelming, all-encompassing, and which displace from the conscious all that is not related to it. Such an image pushes man to action precisely because it includes all that he feels is good, just, and true.

Propaganda makes man serve. Is obvious that propaganda must not concern itself with what is best in man — the highest goals humanity sets for itself, its noblest and most precious feelings. Propaganda does not aim fo elevate man, but to make him serve. It must therefore utilize the most common feelings the most widespread ideas the crudest patterns, and in so doing place itself on a very low level with regard to what it wants man to do and to what end - Hate, hunger, and pride make better levers of propaganda than do love or impartiality.

Projection The propa­gandist will not accuse the enemy of just any misdeed, he will accuse him of the very intention that he himself has and of trying to commit the very crime that he himself is libont In commit. He who wants to provoke a war not only prrnluims his own peaceful intentions but also accuses the other party of provocation. He who uses concentration camps accuses his neighbor of doing so. He who intends to establish a dictatorship always insists that his adversaries are bent on dictatorship. The accusation aimed at the other's intention clearly reveals the intention of the accuser.

It seems to us that there are four great collective sociological assumptions in the modern world. By this we mean not only the Western world, but all the world that shares a modern technology and is structured into nations…. That man’s aim in life is happiness, that man is naturally good, that history develops in endless progress, and that everything is matter. The other great psychological reflection of social reality is the myth. The myth expresses the deep inclinations of a society. Without it, the masses would not cling to a certain civilization, or its process of development and crisis. It is a vigorous impulse, strongly colored, irrational, and charged with all of man’s power to believe… In our society the two great fundamentals myths on which all other myths rest are Science and History. And based on them are the collective myths that are man’s principal orientations: the myth of Work, the myth of Happiness (which is not the same thing as presupposition of happiness), the myth of the Nation, the myth of Youth, the myth of Hero. Propaganda is forced to build on those presuppositions and to express these myths, for without them nobody would listen to it. And in so building it must always go in the same direction as society; it can only reinforce society. A propaganda that stresses virtue over happiness and presents man’s future as one dominated by austerity and contemplation would have no audience at all. A propaganda that questions progress or work would arouse distain and reach nobody; it would immediately be branded as an ideology of the intellectuals, since most people feel that the serious things are material things because they are related to labor, and so on. It is remarkable how the various presuppositions and aspects of myths complement each other, support each other, mutually defend each other: If the propagandist attacks the network at one point, all myths react to the attack. Propaganda must be based on current beliefs and symbols to reach man and win him over.

Genuine compliance" The manipulation of symbols is necessary for three reasons. First of all, it persuades the individual to enter the framework of an organization. Second, it furnishes him with reasons, justification, motivations for action. Third, it obtains his total allegiance. More and more we are learning that genuine compliance is essential if action is to be effective. The worker, the soldier, and the partisan must believe in what they are doing, must put all their heart and their good will into it; they must also find their equilibrium, their satisfactions, in their actions. All this is the result of psychological influence, which cannot attain great results alone, but which can attempt anything when combined with organization.

Horizontal propaganda thus is very hard to make (particularly because it needs so many instructors), but it is exceptionally efficient through its meticulous encirclement of everybody, through the effective participation of all present, and through their public declarations of adherence. It is peculiarly a system that seems to coincide perfectly with egalitarian societies claim­ing to be based on the will of the people and calling themselves democratic: each group is composed of persons who are alike, and one actually can formulate the will of such a group. But all this is ultimately much more stringent and totalitarian than explosive propaganda. Thanks to this system Mao has succeeded in passing from subversive propaganda to integration propaganda.

Group intensity and propaganda effectiveness We now take up another basic trait of the social psychology of propaganda: the more intense the life of a group to which an individual belongs the more active and effective propaganda is. A group in which feelings of belonging are weak, in which common objectives are imprecise or the structure is in the process of changing, in which conflicts are rare, and which is not tied to a collective focus of interest, cannot make valid propaganda either to its members or to those outside. But where the vitality of a group finds expression in the forms mentioned, it not only can make effective propaganda but also can make its members increasingly sensitive to propaganda in general. The more active and alive a group, the more its members will listen to propaganda and believe it.

Middle class propagandists For propaganda to be effective, the propagandee must have a certain store of ideas and a number of conditioned reflexes. These are acquired only with a little affluence, some education, and peace of mind springing from relative security. Conversely, all propagandists come from the upper middle class whether Soviet, Nazi, Japanese, or American popagandists. The wealthy and very cultured class provides no propagandists because it is remote from the people and does not understand them well enough to influence them. The lower class does not furnish any because its members rarely have the means of educating themselves (even in the U.S.S.R.) More importantly, they cannot stand back and look at their class with the perspective needed to devise symbols for it. Thus studies show that most propagandists are recruited From the middle class.

Enthusiasm and adventure In all cases, propaganda of agitation tries to stretch energies to the utmost, obtain substantial sacrifices, and induce the in­dividual to bear heavy ordeals. It takes him out of his everyday life, his normal framework, and plunges him into enthusiasm and adventure; it opens to him hitherto unsuspected possibilities, and suggests extraordinary goals that nevertheless seem to him completely within reach. Propaganda of agitation thus unleashes an explosive movement; it operates inside a crisis or actually provokes the crisis itself. On the other hand, such propaganda can obtain only effects of relatively short duration. If the proposed objective is not achieved fast enough, enthusiasm will give way to discour­agement and despair. Therefore specialists in agitation propa­ganda break up the desired goals into a series of stages to be reached one by one.

Government use of agitation propaganda Governments also employ this propaganda of agitation when after having been installed in power, they want to pursue a revolutionary course of action. Thus Lenin, having installed the Soviets, organized the agitprops and developed the long campaign of agitation in Russia to conquer resistance and crush the kulaks. In such a case, subversion aims at the resistance of a segment of a class, and an internal enemy is chosen for attack. Similarly, most of Hitler's propaganda was propaganda of agitation. Hitler could work his sweeping social and economic transformations only by constant agitation, by overexcitement, by straining energies to the utmost. Nazism grew by successive waves of feverish enthusiasm and thus attained its revolutionary objectives. Finally, the great campaigns in Communist China were precisely propaganda of agitation. Only such propaganda could produce those "great leaps forward.

Primary education and suscepitibility to propganda Actually, the most obvious result of primary education in the 19th and 20th centuries was to make the individual susceptible to super-propaganda. There is no chance of raising the intellectual level of Western populations sufficiently and rapidly enough to compensate for the progress of propaganda. Propaganda techniques have advanced so much faster than the reasoning capacity of the average man that to close this gap and shape this man intellectually outside the framework of propaganda is almost impossible. In fact what happens and what we see all around us is the claim that propaganda itself is our culture and what the masses ought to learn. Only in and through propaganda have the masses access to political economy, politics, art, or literature. Primary education makes it possible to enter the realm of propaganda, in which people then receive their intellectual and cultural environment.

Conditions for horizontal propaganda The horizontal form of propaganda needs two conditions: first of all a lack of contact between groups. A member of a small group must not belong to other groups in which he would be subjected to other influences that would give him a chance to find himself again and with it the strength to resist. This is why the Chinese Communists insisted on breaking up traditional groups, such as the family. A private and heterogeneous group (with different ages, sexes and occupations) the family is a tremendous obstacle to such propaganda. In China, where the family was still very powerful, it had to be broken up. The problem is very different in the United States and in the Western societies there the social structures are sufficiently flexible and disintegrated to be no obstacle. It is not necessary to break up the family in order to make the group dynamic and fully effective: the family already broken up. It no longer has the power to envelop the individual; it is no longer the place where the individual is formed and has his roots. The field is clear for the influence of small groups.

Propaganda is confined to utilizing existing material, it does not create it. This material falls into four categories. First there are the psychological "mechanisms" that permit the propagandist to know more or less precisely that the individual will respond in a certain way to a certain stimulus - Here the psychologists are far from agreement; behaviorism, depth psychology, and the psychology of instincts postulate very different psychic mechanisms and see essentially different connections and motivations. Here the propagandist is at the mercy of these interpretations. Second, opinions, conventional patterns and stereotypes exist concretely in a particular milieu or individual. Third, ideologies exist which are more or less consciously shared, accepted, and disseminated, and which form the only intellectual, or rather para-intellectual, element that must be reckoned with in propaganda. Fourth and finally, the propagandist must concern himself above all with the needs of those whom he wishes to reach. All propaganda must respond to a need, whether it be a concrete need (bread, peace, security, work) or a psychological need.

Superficial news for the average man This situation makes the "current-events man" a ready target for propaganda. Indeed, such a man is highly sensitive to the influence of present-day currents; lacking landmarks, be follows all currents. He Is unstable because he runs after what happened today; he relates to the event and therefore cannot resist any impulse coming from that event. Because he is immersed in current affairs, this man has a psychological weakness that puts him at the mercy of the propagandist. No confrontation ever occurs between the event and the truth; no relationship ever exists between the event and the person. Real information never concerns such a person. What could be more striking, more distressing more decisive than the splitting of the atom, apart from the bomb itself? And yet this great development is kept in the background, behind the fleeting and spectacular result of some catastrophe or sports event because that is the superficial news the average man wants. Propaganda addresses itself to that man; like him, it can relate only to the most superficial aspect of a spectacular event, which alone can interest man and lead him to make a certain decision or adopt a certain attitude.

The importance of project secrecy Propaganda can never reveal its true projects and plans or divulge government secrets. That would be to submit the project to public discussion, to the scrutiny of public opinion, and thus prevent their success. More serious, it would make the project vulnerable to enemy action by forewarning him so that he could take all the proper precautions to make them fail. Propaganda must serve instead as a veil for such project, masking true intentions. It must be in effect a smokescreen. Maneuvers take place behind protective screens of words on which public atten­tion is fixed. Propaganda is necessarily a declaration of one's intentions. It is a declaration of purity that will never be realized, a declaration of peace, of truth, of social justice. Of course, one must not be too precise at the top level, or promise short-term reforms, for it would be risky to invite a comparison between what was promised and what was done. Such comparison would be possible if propaganda operated in the realm of future fact. Therefore, it should be confined to intentions, to the moral realm, to values, to generalities. And if some angry man were to point out the contradictions, in the end his argument would cany no weight with the public.

For propaganda to succeed, a society must first have two complementary qualities: It must be both an individualist and a mass society. These two qualities are often considered contradictory. It is believed that an individualist society, in which the individual is thought to have a higher value than the group tends to destroy groups that limit the individual's range of action, whereas a mass society negates the individual and reduces him to a cipher. But this contradiction is purely theoretical and an illusion. In actual fact, an individualist society must be a mass society, because the first move toward liberation of the individual is to break up the small groups that are an organic fact of the entire society. In this process the individual frees himself completely from family, village, parish or brotherhood bonds - only to find himself directly vis-a-vis the entire society. When individuals are not held together by local structures, the only form in which they can live together is in an unstructured mass society, Similarly, a mass society can only be based on individuals — that is on men in their isolation, whose identities are determined by their relationships with one another. Precisely because the individual claims to be equal to all other individuals he becomes an abstraction and is in effect reduced to a cipher.

Intellectuals and manufactured problems The greater a persons knowledge of political and economic facts, the more sensitive and vulnerable is his judgment. Intellectuals are most easily reached by propaganda, particularly if it employs ambiguity. The reader of a number ol newspapers expressing diverse attitude — just because he is better informed - is more subjected than anyone else to a propaganda that he cannot perceive, even though he claims to retain free choice in the mastery of all this information. Actually, he is being conditioned to absorb all the propaganda that coordinates and explains the facts he believes himself to be mastering. Thus, information not only provides the basis for propaganda but gives propaganda the means to operate; for information actually generates the problems that propaganda exploits and for which it pretends to offer solutions. In fact, no propaganda can work until the moment when a set of facts has become a problem in the eyes of those who constitute public opinion. At the moment such problems begin to confront public opinion, propaganda on the part of a government, a party, or a man can begin to develop fully by magnifying that problem on the one hand and promising solutions for it on the other. But propaganda cannot easily create a political or economic problem out of nothing. There must be some reason in reality. The problem need not actually exist, but there must be a reason why it might exist.

Propaganda of integration The less educated and informed the people to whom propaganda of agitation is addressed, the easier it is to make such propaganda. That is why it is particularly suited for use among the so-called lower classes (the proletariat) and among African peoples. There it can rely on some key words of magical import, which are believed without question even though the hearers cannot attribute any real content to them and do not fully understand them.... In contrast to this propaganda of agitation is the PROPAGANDA OF INTEGRATION — the propaganda of developed nations and characteristic of our civilization; in fact it did not eXist before the 20TH century. It is a propaganda of conformity- It is related to the fact, analyzed earlier, that in Western society it is no longer sufficient to obtain a transitory political act (such as a vote); one needs total adherence to a society's truths and behavioral patterns. As the more perfectly uniform the societv, the stronger its power and effectiveness each member should be only an organic and functional fragment of it, perfectly adapted and integrated. He must share the stereotypes, beliefs and reactions of the group: he must be an active participant in its economic, ethical, esthetic, and political doings. All his activities, all his sentiments are dependent on this collectivity. And, as he is often reminded, he can fulfill himself only through this collectivity, as a member of the group. Propaganda of integration thus aims at making the individual participate in his society in every way. It is a long-term propaganda, a self-reproducing propaganda that seeks to obtain stable behavior, to adapt the individual to his everyday life, to reshape his thoughts and behavior in terms of the permanent social setting. We can see that this propaganda is more extensive and complex than propaganda of agitation it must be permanent, for the Individual can no longer be left to himself.

The urban isolated individual An individual can be influenced by forces such as propaganda only when he is cut off from membership in local groups because such groups are organic and have a well-structured material, spirltual and emotional life; they are not easily penetrated by propaganda. For example, it is much more difficult today for outside propaganda to influence a soldier integrated into a military group, or a militant member of a monolithic party, than to influence the same man when he is a mere citizen. Nor is the organic group sensitive to psychological contagion, which is so important to the success of Nazi propaganda. One can say generally, that 19th century individualist society came about through the disintegration of such small groups as the family or the church. Once these groups lost their importance, the individual was substantially isolated. He was plunged into a new environment generally urban and thereby "uprooted." He no longer had a traditional place in which to live. He was no longer geographically attached to a fixed place, or historically to his ancestry. An individual thus uprooted can only be part of a mass- He is on his own, and individualist thinking asks of him something he has never been required to do before: that he, the individual, become the measure of all things. Thus he begins to judge everything for himself. In fact he must make his own judgments. He is thrown entirely on his own resources; he can find criteria only in himself. He is clearly responsible for his own decisions, both personal and social. He becomes the beginning and the end of everything. Before him there was nothing; after him there will be nothing. His own life becomes the only criterion of justice and injustice, of Good and Evil. The individual is placed in a minority position and burdened at the same time with a total crushing responsibility. Such conditions make an individualist society fertile ground for modern propaganda. The permanent uncertainty, the social mobility, the absence of sociological protection and of traditional frames of reference — all these inevitably provide propaganda with a malleable environment that can be fed information from the outside and conditioned at will. The individual left to himself is defenseless the more so because he may be caught up in a social current thus becoming easy prey for propaganda. As a member of a small group he was fairly well protected from collective influences, customs, and suggestions. He was relatively unaffected by changes in the society at large.

I always come back to this thing that this French sociologist Jacques Ellul said, '​There are no political solutions, only technological ones. The rest is propaganda​.

The individual is considered part of the mass and included in it (and so far as possible systematically integrated into it) because in that way his psychic defenses are weakened, his reactions are easier to provoke, and the propagandist profits from the process of diffusion of emotions through the ma*s and, at the same time, from the pressures felt by an individual when in a group. Emotionalism, impulsiveness, excess, etc. — all these characteristics of the individual caught up in a mass are well known and very helpful to propaganda. Therefore, the individual must never be considered as being alone; the listener to a radio broadcast, though actually alone, is nevertheless part of a large group, and he is aware of it.

We must not think that a man ceases to follow the (official) line when there is a sharp turn. He continues to follow it because he is caught up in the system. Of course, he notices the change that has taken place, and he is surprised. He may even be tempted to resist — as the Communists were at the time of the German-Soviet pact. But will he then engage in a sustained effort to resist propaganda? Will he disavow his past actions? Will he break with the environment in which his propaganda is active? Will he stop reading a particular newspaper? Such breaks are too painful; faced with them, the individual, feeling that the change in line is not an attack on his real self, prefers to retain his habits.

Psychological consultants" (The propaganda) organization can be the integration of an entire population into cells by agents in each block of residences; in that case. It operates inside a society by integrating the whole social body. (Of course this is accompanied by all the psychological work needed to press people into cells.) Or an effective transformation can be made in the economic political, or social domain. We know that the propagandist is also a psychological consultant to governments; he indicates what measures should or should not be taken to facilitate certain psychological manipulations. It is too often believed that propaganda serves the purpose of sugar-coating bitter pills, of making people accept policies they would not accept spontaneously. But in most cases propaganda seeks to point out courses of action desirable in themselves, such as helpful reforms. Propaganda then becomes this mixture of the actual satisfaction given to the people by the reforms and subsequent exploitation of that satisfaction.

The separation of thought and action in our society." We are living in a time when systematically — though without our wanting it so — action and thought are being separated. In our society, he who thinks can no longer act for himself; he must act through the agency of others, and in many cases he cannot act at all. He who acts cannot first think out his action, either because of lack of time and the burden of his personal problems, or because society's plan demands that he translate others' thoughts into action. And we see the same division within the individual himself. For he can use his mind only outside the area of his job — in order to find himself, to use his leisure to better himself, to discover what best suits hint, and thus to individualize himself, whereas in the context of his work he yield* to the common necessity, the common method, the need to incorporate his own work into the overall plan. Escape into dreams is suggested to him white he performs wholly mechanized actions.

Post-hoc rationalization The action-reflex obtained by propaganda is only a beginning, a point of departure; it will develop harmoniously only if there is an organization in which (and thanks to which) the proselyte becomes militant. Without organization, psychological incitement leads to excesses and deviation of action in the very course of its development. Through organization, the proselyte receives an overwhelming impulse that makes him act with the whole of his being. He is actually transformed into a religious man in the psycho-sociological sense of the term; justice enters into the action he performs because of the organization of which he is a part. Thus his action is integrated into a group of conforming actions. Not only does such integration seem to be the principal aim of all propaganda today; it Is also what makes the effect of propaganda endure. For action makes propaganda's effect irreversible. He who acts in obedience to propaganda can never go back. He is now obliged to believe in that propaganda because of his past action. He is obliged to receive from it his justification and authority, without which his action will seem to him absurd or unjust, which would be intolerable. He is obliged to continue to advance in the direction indicated by propaganda, for action demands more action. He is what one calls "committed" — which is certainly what the Communist party anticipates, for example, and what the Nazis accomplished. The man who has acted in accordance with the existing propaganda has taken his place in society. From then on he has enemies. Often he has broken with his milieu or his family; he may be compromised. He is forced to accept the new milieu and the new friends that propaganda makes for him. Often he has committed an act reprehensible by traditional moral standards and has disturbed a certain urder. He needs a justification for this — and he gets more deeply involved by repeating the act in order to prove that it was just.

Vision of the future The progress of technology is continuous; propaganda must voice this reality which is one of mans convictions. All propaganda must play on the fact that the nation will be industrialized, more will be produced, greater progress is imminent, and so on. No propaganda can succeed if it defends outdated production methods or obsolete social or administrative institutions. Though occasionally advertising may profitably evoke the good old days, political propaganda may not. Rather, it must evoke the future, the tomorrows that beckon, precisely because such visions impel the individual to act. Propaganda is carried aloof on this current and cannot oppose it; it must confirm it and reinforce it. Thus, propaganda will turn a normal feeling of patriotism into a raging nationalism. It not only reflects myths and presuppositions, it hardens them, sharpens them, invests them with ihe power of shock and action.

The news cycle Actually, the public is prodigiously sensitive to current news. Its attention is focused immediately on any spectacular event that fits in with its myths. At the same time the public will fix its inter­est and its passion on one point, to the exclusion of all the rest. Besides, people have already become accustomed to and have accommodated themselves to "the rest" (yesterday's news or that of the day before yesterday). We are dealing here not just with forgetfulnes but also with plain loss of interest.

Outdated words and words that penetrate like bullets The terms, the words, the subjects that propaganda utilizes must have in themselves the power to break the barrier of the individual's indifference. They must penetrate Like bullets; they must spontaneously evoke a set of images and have a certain grandeur of their own. To circulate outdated words or pick new ones that can penetrate only by force is unavailing, for timeliness furnishes the "operational words" with their exclusive and affective power. Part of the power of propaganda is due to its use of the mass media, but this power will be dissipated if propaganda relies on operational words that have lost their force.

Propaganda and "Truth" The most generally held concept of propaganda is that it is a series of tail stories, a tissue of lies, and that lies are necessary for effective propaganda, Hitler himself apparently confirmed this point of view when he said that the bigger the lie, the more its chance of being believed. This concept leads to two attitudes among the public. The first is: "Of course we shall not be victims of propaganda because we are capable of distinguishing truth from falsehood." Anyone holding that conviction is extremely susceptible to propaganda because when propaganda does tell the "truth" he is then convinced that it is no longer propaganda; moreover, his self-confidence makes him all the more vulnerable to attacks of which he is unaware.

Local facts ...Advertisers make it a rule to be accurate and organize a bureau of standards to denounce false claims. But here we refer to an essential factor: experience. The customer has good or bad experiences with a product. In political matters, however, personal experience is vety rare, difficult to come by and inconclusive. Thus one must distinguish between local facts, which can be checked, and others. Obviously, propaganda must respect local facts, otherwise it would destroy itself. It cannot hold out for long against local evidence unless the population is so securely in the palm of the propagandist's hand that he could say absolutely anything and still be believed but that is a rare condition.

Innuendo Americans call this technique of using accurate facts in propaganda "innuendo." Facts are treated in such a fashion that they draw their listener into an irresistible sociological current The public is left to draw obvious conclusions from a cleverly presented truth and the great majority comes to the same conclusions. To obtain this result, propaganda must be based on some truth that can be said in few words and is able to linger in the collective consciousness. In such cases the enemy cannot go against the tide which he might do if the basis of the propaganda were a lie or the sort of truth requiring a proof to make it stick. On the contrary the enemy now must provide proof, but it no longer changes the conclusions that the propagandee has already drawn from the suggestions.

Sociological propaganda produces a progressive adaptation to a certain order of things, a certain concept of human relations, which unconsciously molds individuals and makes them conform to society. Sociological propaganda springs up spontaneously; ft is not the result of deliberate propaganda action. No propagandists deliberately use this method, though many practice It unwittingly, and tend in this direction without realizing it. For example, when an American producer makes a film, he has certain definite ideas he wants to express, which are not intended to be propaganda. Rather, the propaganda element is in the American way of Life with which he is permeated and which he expresses in his film without realizing it.

Creating psychological conditions One must avoid attacking any trend frontally. It is better to concentrate one's efforts on the creation of psychological conditions so that the desired result seems to come from them naturally." The modification of the psychological climate brings about still other consequences that one cannot obtain directly. This is what Ogle calls "suggesbbility"; the degree of suggestibility depends on a man's environment and psychological climate. And that is precisely what modifies the activities mentioned above. It is what makes them propaganda, for their aim is simply to instill In the public an attitude that will prepare the ground for the main propaganda to follow.

Re-integrating the revolutionaries The transition from one type of propaganda to the other is extremely delicate and difficult. After one has over the years excited the masses, flung them into adventures, fed their hopes and their hatreds, opened the gates of action to them and assured them that all their actions were justified, it is difficult to make them re-enter the ranks, to integrate them into the normal framework of politics and economics. What has been unleashed cannot be brought under control easily, particularly habits of violence or of taking the law into one's own hands—these disappear very slowly. This Is all the more true because the results achieved by revolution are usually deceptive; just to seize puwer is not enough - The people want to give full vent to the hatred developed by agitation propaganda and to have the promised bread or land immediately. And the troops that helped in the seizure of power rapidly become the opposition and continue to act as they did under the influence of subversion propaganda. The newly established government must then use propaganda to eliminate these difficulties and to prevent the continuation of the battle. But this must be propaganda designed to incorporate individuals into the "New Order," transform their opponents into collaborators of the State, to make them accept delays in the fulfillment of promises — in other words, it must be integration propaganda...The government must follow the crowds, which cannot be held back once they are set off; the government is forced, step by step, to satisfy appetites aroused by agitation propaganda.

Vertical propaganda One trait of vertical propaganda is that the propagandee remains alone even though he is part of a crowd - His shouts of enthusiasm or hatred, though part of the shouts of the crowd, do not put him in communication with others; his shouts are only a response to the leader. Finally, this kind of propaganda requires a passive attitude from those subjected to it. They are seized, they are manipulated, they are committed; they experience what they are asked to experience; they are really transformed into objects. Consider, for instance, the quasi-hypnotic condition of those propagandized at a meeting. There, the individual is de-personalized; his decisions are no longer his own but those suggested by the leader...

Instead, successful propaganda will occupy every moment of the individual’s life: through posters and loudspeakers when he is out walking, through radio and newspapers at home, through meetings and movies in the evening. The individual must not be allowed to recover, to collect himself, to remain untouched by propaganda during any relatively long period, for propaganda is not the touch of the magic wand. It is based on slow, constant impregnation. It creates convictions and compliance through imperceptible influences that are effective only by continuous repetition. It must create a complete environment for the individual, one from which he never emerges. And to prevent him from finding external points of reference, it protects him by censoring everything that might come in from the outside. The slow building up of reflexes and myths, of psychological environment and prejudices, requires propaganda of very long duration.

To the extent that propaganda is based on current news, it cannot permit time for thought or reflection. A man caught up in the news must remain on the surface of the event; be is carried along in the current, and can at no time take a respite to judge and appreciate; he can never stop to reflect. There is never any awareness--of himself, of his condition, of his society--for the man who lives by current events.

Naturally, the educated man does not believe in propaganda, he shrugs and is convinced that propaganda has no effect on him. This is, in fact, one of his great weaknesses, and propagandists are well aware that in order to reach someone, one must first convince him that propaganda is ineffectual and not very clever. Because he is convinced of his own superiority, the intellectual is much more vulnerable than anybody else to this maneuver.

Horizontal propaganda The most remarkable characteristic of horizontal propaganda is the small group. The individual participates actively in the life of this group, in a genuine and lively dialogue. In China the group is watched carefully to see that each member speaks, expresses himself, gives his opinions. Only in speaking will the individual gradually discover his own convictions (which also will be those of the group), become irrevocably involved, and help others to form their opinions (which are Identical).

Self-justification Modern man needs a relation to facts, a self-justification to convince himself that by acting in a certain way he is obeying reason and proved experience. We must therefore study the close relationship between information and propaganda. Propaganda's content increasingly resembles information. It has even clearly been proved that a violent, excessive, shock-provoking propa­ganda text leads ultimately to less conviction and participation than does a more "informative" and reasonable text on the same subject. A large dose of fear precipitates immediate action; a reasonably small dose produces lasting support. The listener's critical power decreases if the propaganda message is more rational and less violent.

Propaganda and urban density Thus for propaganda to be effective psychologically and sociologically, a combination of demographic phenomena is required. The first is population density, with a high frequency of diversified human contacts, exchanges of opinions and experienced and with primary importance placed on the feeling of togetherness. The second is urban concentration, which, resulting from the fusion between mass and crowd, gives the maas its psychological and sociological character. Only then can propaganda utilize crowd effects; only then can it profit from the psychological modifications that collective life produces in the individual and without which practically none of the propaganda would "take." Much more, the instruments of propaganda find their principal source of support in the urban concentration.

The leader as Hero The leader or expert who enjoys authority and prestige among the mass is the man who best speaks for that mass. The ordinary man must see himself reflected in his leader. The leader must be a sublimation of the "ordinary man " He must not seem to be of a different quality. The ordinary man must not feel that the leader transcends him. This quality of the average men in the Hero (actor, dictator, sports champion) has been clearly demonstrated in the history of the past thirty years. It is what E. Morin emphasizes in his study of the deification of film stars. When a man follows the leader, he actually follows the mass, the majority group that the leader so perfectly represents. The leader loses all power when he is separated from his group; no propaganda can emanate from a solitary leader.

Pure individualist society We are no longer in a sociological situation comparable to that of traditional societies in which there was barely any mass propaganda and almost nothing other than local psychological influences. And when propaganda did enter into such societies, it had to fight existing local groups and try to influence and modify them; and these organic groups resisted. At present we are witnessing the emergence of organic groups in which individuals tend to be integrated. These groups have certain traits of the old organic groups, but their collective life, their intellectual, emotional, and spiritual life is determined by propaganda and they can no longer maintain themselves without it. They become organic groups in the mass society only if they subject themselves to, and serve as agents of, propaganda. Our society has been completely transformed: when we left the purely individualist stage, which permitted propaganda to develop, we arrived at a society in which primary group structures could still exist but in which total propaganda was established and the group no longer could be separated from such propaganda.

A conflict between primary and secondary opinions will arise. One will dominate the other. Propaganda can exist only in societies in which second hand opinion definitely dominates primary opinion and the latter is reduced and driven into a minority position; then, when the individual finds himself between the two conflicting types of opinion, he will normally grasp the general, public opinion.

Central control of media Where film production, the press and radio transmission are not centrally controlled, no propaganda is possible. As long as a large number of independent news agencies, newsreel producers find diverse local papers function, no conscious and direct propaganda is possible. This is not because the reader or viewer has real freedom of choice — which he has not as we shall see later — but because none of the media has enough power to hold the individual constantly and through all channels. Local influences are sufficiently strong to neutralize the great national press, to give just one example. To make the organisation of propaganda possible, the media must be concentrated, the number of news agencies reduced, the press brought under single control, and radio and film monopolies established. The effect will be still greater if the various media are concentrated in the same hands. When a newspaper trust also extends its control over film and radio, propaganda can be directed at the mases and the individual can be caught in the wide net of media. Only through concentration in a few hands of a large number of media can one attain a true orchestration, a continuity, and an application of scientific methods of influencing individuals. A state monopoly or a private monopoly, is equally effective. Such a situation is in the making in the United States, France, and Germany.

Identical Centers of Interest form in to Public Opinion Thus information prepares the ground for propaganda to the extend that a large number of individuals receive the same information, their reactions will be similar. As a result, identical "centers of interest" will be produced and then become the great questions of our time made public by press and radio, and group opinions will be formed which will establish contact with each other — one of the essential processes in the formation of public opinion. Moreover, this leads to the formation of common reflexes and common prejudices.

Myths Ideology differs from myth in three important respects: first the myth is imbedded much more deeply in the soul, sinks its roots much farther down, is more permanent, and provides man with a fundamental image of his condition and the world at large. Second, the myth is much less "doctrinaire"; an ideology (which is NOT a doctrine because it is BELIEVED and not PROVED) is first of all a set of ideas, which, even when they are irrational, are still ideas. The myth is more intellectually diffuse; it is part emotionalism, part affective response, part a sacred feeling, and more important. Third, the myth has stronger powers of activation whereas ideology is more passive (one can believe in an ideology and yet remain on the sidelines). The myth does not leave man passive: it drives him to action.

It is clear that the violence of the police or of administrations, that of the great economic powers and of "imperialism," have nothing of the religious in them; but the violence specific to our time, which is the overflow of an exaltation, and the means par excellence for the realization of an ideal carried to the absolute limit, especially that of the young leftists those are acts of the religious people of this age. They believe absolutely. They listen to no reason. Without knowing it, they have an otherworldly outlook which they describe as political. They want to change society by changing life. They are ready for every sacrifice, and are ready to sacrifice all who do not believe. They form sectarian cliques. They have a yen for spectacular martyrdom and for witnessing through propaganda. They despise all truth which fails to confirm them in their absolute. They confound a rational explanation of the world with belief in old, resurrected myths. Their violence is an expression of the combination of all that. For them, without hesitation, violence is a religious action against evil, because the world, like every religious world, is clearly divided between absolute Good and absolute Evil.